Saturday, May 17, 2014

I must admit that freehand painting scares me a bit as I have not drawn or painted in such a long time. But I gave it a try and made this card.

I haven't decided what sentiment I want to add to this card, maybe I'll leave it blank. In the corner is my Chinese name. Of course I had to stamp it crooked... *roll my eyes at myself* Maybe next time I should stamp that first before painting on it.

When I first painted this goldfish my hubby commented that this looked like a turtle with a tail. So I fixed it up a bit and he's not a turtle-goldfish anymore. Not as much at least, LOL!

If you are curious of my painting process, here are some pictures I took along the way...

I taped the piece of watercolour paper onto a small (self-healing) cutting mat so I can rotate it while I paint. Then I used a pencil to sketch out the goldfish. Before I started painting I used my eraser to really lighten up the lines so they won't show through the watercolour paints.

Started with a light wash of orange and red colours.

Gradually added more layers of colours. I wasn't patient enough and painted their eyes too soon causing the black paint to bleed. Their eyes ended up larger than I had planned. Also, in this picture, you can see how the bottom goldfish looks like a turtle (with a tail, as my hubby put it). HAHAHA!

Thursday, May 15, 2014

I can't remember which night it was, but I got really tired of watercolour painting and just couldn't come up with any new ideas. I stared and stared at my desk not knowing what to do and then spotted a package of white Prima Mulberry Flowers. I dumped the flowers out, played with them for a bit and decided to watercolour on them.

I diluted some Distress Re-inker Ink (in Peacock Feather) with different amounts of water to create different shades of colour. Then I soaked the flowers in the solutions and created these aqua coloured flowers.

I layered and glued the flowers in the top and bottom corners. The sentiment came from the Simon Says Stamps - Very Special stamp set.

I was lucky and found some enamel dots in matching colours, so I added them as well.

I'm very pleased with this card, because it turned out much better than I anticipated.

Here's another card I forgot to blog about earlier, so it's also out of order...

I made this card for day 6 of the class. Jennifer McGuire painted her stamped image using Tsukineko Sparkle Sheer Shimmer Spritz Refill. But since I didn't have any, I mixed some Perfect Pearls into a small amount of water and created my own shimmer water to paint with. I tried several times to paint images using the shimmery water, but I just wasn't in the mood that day and all my attempts turned out horribly. Instead of dumping out all of the shimmery paints I made, I used them to make simple backgrounds... a whole lot of backgrounds.

I cut the background into two halves to create a space on the card base to stamp my sentiment. The sentiment came from the Simon Says Stamp - Banner Sayings stamp set.

You can see the shimmery background better in this picture.

This cutie pie came from The Greeting Farm's Super Secrete Stamp Club - #5 Hood. I painted her using watercolour markers and had lots of fun doing it!

Sorry my posts are a little out of order, I've tried to fix it, but nothing seems to work. I made this card on day 4 of the class, but when I was blogging my cards I forgot about this one, so here it is now...

On day 4 of the card class Yana Smakula taught a lesson on stamping with watercolour. I tried and tried... lost track of how many times I tried... and failed epically! So I finally gave up and made up my own technique. Maybe I can't call it my technique, because I'm sure someone out there has already done this before me. =P

First I watercoloured the background using two shades of Distress re-inker inks and dried it with my heat tool. Then I sprayed a background stamp a few times with plain water and then stamped it onto the background. The stamp picked up the paint from the background and left an imprint of the image. I repeated this 4 or 5 more times and resulted in this background. I like how it turned out, so I'll definitely be using this technique again!

I stamped a sentiment on white cardstock and created my own banner. I outlined the banner using the clear Ink of Stella Brush to make it stand out a little more and to match the pink stripes. You can't tell from the pictures, but the pink stripes in the middle panel were painted using perfect pearls mixed in water which created a shimmery effect.

This is the inside of the card. Both the sentiments on the outside and inside of the card came from a stamp set called Say What by Mama Elephant.

While I was trying really hard to avoid using floral stamps for the majority of the class, I finally gave in on day 8. ALL of the instructors used floral stamps and painted them SO beautifully, I just couldn't resist.

Believe it or not, this card took me an entire day to finish! I hand painted all the flowers and it took way longer than expected! I majored in drawing for my undergrad degree so painting is not one of my strong suits. But I tried really hard and I guess it turned out... ok?

I kept the card simple. I used a frame die (it's an old one, so please don't ask me the name of it or the company who made it) to emboss a frame onto the card base. Then I cut out a smaller frame to paint my flowers on. I didn't paint the flowers from scratch, they came from a stamp set by Mama Elephant called Lovely Mums.

I painted the larger flower on the right first, so it turned out better. The one in the left corner turned out a little darker than I wanted, so I don't like it as much. The sentiment I used also came from Mama Elephant and the stamp set is called Tree Friends.